Well, golly, who coulda seen this coming? And I suspect it's just the beginning...

Tuesday was the official launch of Wisconsin’s new Voter-I.D. law, with citizens now required to present a photo-identification card in order to cast a ballot in the primaries for local elections. And as it turns out, one man refused to vote, because he was so angry that his card from the Department of Veterans Affairs was not on the approved list.

As the Racine Journal Times reported, 69-year old veteran Gil Paar was shocked when poll workers told him his photo I.D. from the V.A. wasn’t on the accepted list. They then asked him if he had a driver’s license — which he did — but he instead refused to show it and left the precinct. “Basically I was trying to make a point,” Paar told the paper. “I gave them four years of my life, why shouldn’t I be able to use my vet’s card?”

As the paper reports, the state election officials explain that the way the law was written, a military-related I.D. must be issued by a uniform service — which does not include the Department of Veterans Affairs. The bottom line: For whatever the reason might be, whether intentional or an accident, V.A. cards were not included on the list.
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Paar also explained that he sees a serious problem: “There’s a possibility that a veteran could have only this type of I.D., because he’s had a stroke, let’s say, up at the V.A. hospital. And because of that, he had his driver’s license taken away. So case in point, he would have only this Veterans Administration I.D. through the hospital.

“And they’re telling me I can’t use it, I couldn’t use it. this is not right. you’ve got a guy who serves, does his time in the Air Force, or Army or the Navy, and then he comes home and can’t vote? What the f—- did I go in for?”

There were other similar stories Tuesday, during the first full roll-out of the Wisconsin GOP's new anti-voter law, passed disingenuously under the guise of curbing "voter fraud". And Tuesday's was just a tiny election. For example, this from Isthmus' The Daily Page...

Melanie Sax and other poll workers recognized the longtime voter. They also found her name and address in the poll book. But she did not have a photo ID for Tuesday's primary so she could not vote.

"She was fairly recently in a car accident and couldn't make it to the DOT to get a Wisconsin ID," said Sax, the chief elections inspector at the polling location at Trinity United Methodist Church on Vilas Avenue. The woman, who does not drive, has neither a driver's license nor a state ID.

That woman was Marge Curtin, 62, who has been living and voting in the Vilas Avenue area for some 40 years. In fact, one of her good friends, whom she met while a nursing student at St. Marys in the 1960s, was working the polls Tuesday.

"We're so lucky to be in this country and to be able to vote," she says. Being shut out of the process hurt: "I did feel bad."

According to poll officials, Curtin was one of two voters turned away for lack of photo ID at the Vilas Avenue polling station Tuesday, the first election in which the state's new requirements were fully in place.
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There was also continued confusion among poll workers over the photo ID requirements. Attorney Tim Verhoff, who recently moved to a new house, says he had no problem when he presented his driver's license with his old address. But his wife's license with her old address was rejected at the same polling station. That should not have happened.
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Andrea Kaminski, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, says Tuesday's primary may not typically draw the people who are most at risk from the voter ID law, including seniors, minorities and students.

And, she adds, "We don't know how many people just don’t even try because they've heard about this new law and are concerned they don't have what they need."

Have a feeling we ain't seen nothing yet. There will be many more of these stories in the coming months. Unless something changes, this is likely to be a very ugly election year --- for the voters.

Legal and Constitutional challenges to these new laws around the country, as passed by Republican legislatures and governors in the wake of the 2010 election, are working their way through the courts on behalf of those who are likely to be disenfranchised by them. In Wisconsin, two different law suits --- one by the League of Women Voters of WI and another by the ACLU --- have already been filed.

Elsewhere, the GOP's new polling place Photo ID restriction law in South Carolina was recently rejected by the U.S. Dept. of Justice after it was found, according to the state's own statistics, to discriminate against minorities, a violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which requires a number of jurisdictions in the country with a history of racial discrimination to receive federal preclearance for all new election laws.

The state has vowed to appeal the DoJ's ruling. The section of the 47-year old Voting Rights Act requiring preclearance for new election laws in some 17 jurisdictions in the nation is also being challenged by opponents of the law who charge the law itself is discriminatory...against those jurisdictions. The VRA was renewed for another 25 years in 2006 by bi-partisan votes of 98 to 0 in the U.S. Senate and 390 to 33 in the Republican-controlled U.S. House. The renewal was signed by George W. Bush.

If you're not smart enough to get a valid I.D. and carry it to the polls then you have no business voting. The issues typically voted on are far more complex than the process of obtaining a picture I.D. Those that advocate for easy, non-verifiable voter registration desire ignorant voters, and rampant fraud, enabling big money to infleuence outcomes rather than allowing well thought out ideas to florish.

hardhead (or whatever) above is being disengenuous at best - no surprise that he wants to make this about some type of voter "test". The party he probably supports in Wisconsin literally stole money from the widows and orphans of solders who gave their lives serving our nation.

Walker's aides, with walker's help, stole money from a support group to pay for walker's website and take vacations in exotic place with their homosexual live-in boyfriend. Even worse, the 2 had gay child porn on their computers!

For the latest in fitzwalkerstan antics, please visit our Web or new blog and tv channel.

You may have seen this, the husband of walker's lieutenant governor whom I have personally seen drunk and staggering into the assembly chamber to vote (illegal in Wisconsin) is committing vote fraud himself!

Too bad the above commentator won't apply the same standards to the other side - he thinks voters need to pass a phony IQ test by jumping through hoops to participate in our democracy and most-likely supports repugs voting while drunk on major bills (in this case, it was the mining bill!)

Now, a federal complaint need not make a facial challenge to Wisconsin's voter obstruction (voter impersonation as you point out) law. See Brennan Center: "future (federal) challenges to voter laws must be filed with respect to the application of a specific law—after its controversial mandates are already applied in an election,"http://www.brennancenter...uphold_indiana_voter_id/

This law is so blatantly unonstitutional that I think even the corrupt 4-3 majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court will have to enjoin the law as voting in Wisconsin is extremely well-protected under Wisconsin Constitutional law, upholding law would cause them to look even more foolish than they do now.

If you're not smart enough to get a valid I.D. and carry it to the polls then you have no business voting

Fact: Intelligence has nothing to do with it.

In its federal lawsuit challenging the WI photo ID law, the ACLU identified six categories of WI residents who lack the requisite form of photo ID mandated by the statute and who face severe, and at times, impossible burdens.

This included 84-year old Ruthelle Frank, who voted in every election since 1948 and was a member of the Brokaw Village Board but cannot get the GOP approved official state photo ID.

She was born at home, without a birth certificate, and will be forced to pay $20 to get one in order to get her supposedly "free" ID to vote. But even that may not be enough. Frank recently learned she may not be able to comply with the state GOP's Photo ID restriction unless she coughs up upwards of $200 to amend the Register of Deeds record of her home, which had misspelled her maiden name.

Fact: There is only one form of "voter fraud" that can be prevented by polling place photo ID laws --- in person impersonation. That form of "voter fraud" is virtually non-existent.

As Loyola Law Prof. Justice Levitt noted in written testimony before the U.S. Senate, since 2000, there were "nine allegations of votes [in general elections] that might have involved votes cast by individuals impersonating others," but those nine may be the result of "poll worker error or voter confusion...During the same period, 400 million votes were cast...Even assuming that each of the nine votes were fraudulent, that amounts to a relevant fraud rate of 0.000002 percent. Americans are struck and killed by lightning more often."

Polling place photo ID has been pushed by Republicans, like convicted felon Charlie White, for one reason only. Photo ID will have a disparate impact on the right for minorities, the poor and the elderly to vote --- that is on those who are not likely to vote for the Party of the One Percent aka the GOP.

Hopefully the people like the Veteran pictured will - if they were (R) - realize that the (R) serve nobody but the ultra-rich and their corporate masters. The (R) could do themselves in over this...everybody'll know somebody who gets caught up in this.

Can you imagine contesting a House election where you had to contest it in portions of 20 counties, or deal with the precincts in portions of 20 counties (I need the voting records of only parts of 20 county election clerks)?

And that is not the worst part of the debacle.

My guess is that Indiana politicians will try to make their gerrymandering worse, not better.

These states are telling people that they have to prove themself innocent of voter fraud.
That goes against the most basic section of our judicial system.
A person is NEVER required to prove themself innocent.

I have been in VA hospitals on and off for over 30 years. I have met multiple veterans who cannot drive due to wounds received in service. To deny a veteran with a government issued valid ID just shows that the Republicans know they cannot win a a fair election. So they do all they can to remove the folks that would vote against them. It is a shame any veteran is treated this way. I wonder how many Republican legislators that voted for this are veterans.

Another thing that should be remembered. The DMV, where one can get an ID, was not required to tell you that your ID would be free. Instead, if you failed to check the box, they then charged you for it. And they also closed DMV offices or at least reduced the hours of operation.
They have allowed a few more ID forms, but it's still a very select few. This suprising they let this group slip. MANY of them support the spoiled little Rich boys. Maybe they think corporate $ and redistricting will be enough?

@hardline. Intelligence has nothing to do with access to the polls. Voter ID is a(as are most GOP ideas)solution in search of a problem.

The veteran depicted in this story had a valid ID. THe reality is that these laws marginalize students and others on the fringes of society.

My mother obtained a passport last year at age 73. Her birth certificate was (deliberately) misspelled by the Doctor at birth. She eventually got a passport but it took months worth of work to obtain. If she had been required to get a MN photo ID for voting she would not have been able to get one in time for an election.

The problem with voter ID is that it takes the discretion away from election judge. When judges are forced to turn away voters that THEY KNOW LIVE IN THE COMMUNITY that is simply wrong.

Hardass is wrong. I am a Wisconsin Election Inspector, and a veteran's government-issues photo card is on the list of acceptable IDs. The poll workers at that particular ward were being jerks. Had a similar situation arisen at the ward in which I worked last Tuesday, I would have instructed the people working check-in to accept the card and double-checked the decision by calling in to the Election Commission.

Hey Wisconsin, you elected Republicans, you got Republican government. This is who they are, this is what they do. Enjoy your serfdom living under your GOP overlords, who with so many Dems disenfranchised, you now may never be able to get out of office.

gdog62, it is actually much worse than that. Like everywhere else in America, the democratic party does not always present a clear difference and even when they grandstand and talk tough, they are short of action when it could matter.

Sure, the fab 14 left the state last year to prevent a quorum and that was a brave thing to do.

But there are any number of issues where dems could make a difference and choose instead to hold meaningless press conferences.

We have dems like Janesville's Cullen that think this is all about being "bipartisan" and reaching across the aisle , even when the repugs can be objectively demonstrated to be lying hacks.

Yes, voter ID is disenfranchising some, but the party itself has been disenfranchising voters for years.

And the propaganda in the mainstream media here is getting heavier. When walkergate is covered the stories are shoved down the memory hole, never to be explained again and every detail that is presented is written as a series of disconnected events.

In terms of voter ID, even though there clearly were incidents of people not being able to vote and the turnout was only about 10 percent, the major news outlets proclaimed "no problems!" and that the new policies just worked great.

Many of us are working hard to turn this around and if your point is that it won't be easy, you are right.

To me, the most disturbing thing is that once certain union interests get back what they lost, they will probably go back to voting republican - if not in the next election cycle, in the near future.

Many that proclaim "solidarity" actually are just whining that it is "unfair" that something was taken from them, yet they have routinely advocated for and voted for an agenda that leaves the majority of citizens behind - shame on them.

a veteran's government-issues photo card is on the list of acceptable IDs. The poll workers at that particular ward were being jerks.

I haven't had the time to look up yet whether you are wrong or right there. Either way, however, it underscores how a) confusing this voter suppression law can be and b) how easily it can be abused by those entrusted to oversee it (poll workers) if they wish to. That's not to say they did, since, as noted, I haven't checked out your assertion yet. But just pointing out how it could be used to disenfranchise voters at the whim of "jerks".

The VA card has no birthdate or address, no wonder they wouldn't accept it.

Good point! Just because his name was on the voter rolls and matched that VA card, he coulda stolen it from somewhere, figured out where the guy live, and then risked a felony charge to take the chance that that the real veteran hadn't already voted when he showed up to vote under his name!

Best to presume veterans guilty until they can prove their innocence. It's not as if they risked their lives so that we can all vote or anything.

Thanks for your vigilance, Krissy! How American Democracy survived more than 200 years without polling place Photo ID restrictions and your support for keeping veterans from casting their legal vote I do not know!

My grandmother, who didn't drive, never had a photo ID her whole life. Yet she voted her entire adult life. She had a voter's registration card, and she voted. The people at her precinct knew her. These GOP-constructed laws are blatant attempts to suppress turnout. They are despicable. My state, Pennsylvania, has passed them, too. The Republican party has exposed themselves as enemies of Democracy.